


Harkening

by skyshores



Category: Mononoke-hime | Princess Mononoke
Genre: Amorous Sports, Backstory, F/M, Post-Canon, here we go agaaain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-17
Updated: 2013-04-17
Packaged: 2017-12-08 11:18:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/760747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyshores/pseuds/skyshores
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They listen and remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Harkening

**Author's Note:**

> A little nocturne in honour of all the moonlit Ashitaka/San doujin I've come across on Pixiv (there's this very pretty one, wherein Ashitaka propositions to San, "shall we make children?" and I couldn't even stop laughing maniacally to myself; ilu J-fandom). Unapologetic for my relinquishment of all sensibleness (not that I had much to begin with, I think), why are they horny all the time, yadayada, pls have more married couple hijinks ad nauseum?

Autumn raised the moon clear and august. Uninterrupted brightness billowed down and cut the cavern in streaks of shadow and light. Jadelike white illuminated San's feet as she stepped towards the den with a kabocha cradled in each of her arms. With bated breath Ashitaka reached for her shoulders. He paced out from the stark black of the cave and into a soft, dusty brilliance. Striding up close, he curled all of his fingers around her nape and rested the remaining thumb at the base of her throat.

"You ought to be out there with them in the fields, or asleep in Tataraba," San said, without surprise; she had probably smelled him a mile away. "You're two suns early."

Ashitaka paid her words no heed. "You took these, didn't you." He clinched his fingers around her waist, drawing her to him, stirring the scent of the river from her hair and a soft gasp from her surprise. The fruits of her borrowed labour dropped to their feet. The smooth shape of the kabocha deadened the noise of the fall, and then its own slow roll, so that it did not muffle the sigh that sounded from Ashitaka's mouth when he placed it against her ear. At last he was holding her. "I like better to be in here with you."

"I borrowed them." Resolute was San in keeping her stance; she steeled her eyes, bared her teeth, even when she forgot to rebel against the breath tickling her neck. "And you're a fool for not—"

"Tell the truth," Ashitaka said, coiling his forefinger over her cheek, "do you want me to be here?"

San's hands slackened around him; her forehead touched his throat. She gave her best nuzzle, and ah, it made winged things start in Ashitaka's belly, sent something molten and heady and eager down his spine and through his body, potent when put so close to her warm, tactile one. His heart pealed at that touch, that honour.

"You might be able to make me glad that you are."

With the flush that rose up towards the surface of his skin Ashitaka remembered the chill that had brought him here a night earlier than scheduled; the emptiness of his futon; the inebriated laughter of the couple in the room adjacent to his; and the thought of San's cheeks pink and warm in his hands. The nights were too long and too nippy this time of year.

Ashitaka tautened his hold on San, and slinked his hands lower. "Is that a yes?"

San looked up at him. Ashitaka thought he might want to step into her eyes, dusky and warm and still redolent of summer. With reverent lips Ashitaka so brought himself to kiss her lashes and smooth his mouth over each of her eyelids. They were slick with rain and sweet to touch.

"It means I'd like to see you try to make me say it," she spoke the words into his throat whilst exhaling warmth over his neck.

"San." There was little breath left in him. "Shall we be generous tonight?"

San half-laughed, half-growled. She drew her fingers against his face and her teeth along his jaw. "If there's no teasing. And no holding back! Do you promise?"

"I promise, I promise, I promise," Ashitaka said, fitting each word between little wanting kisses. There were wet ones, and toothy ones, and at some point he had probably batted his eyelashes at her and pleaded again with a refrain of please _,_ please, please _,_ in desperation or delirium or both. Most likely both. "I promise."

"Now you smell good." San snuffed along his jaw, jugular, sternum. Ashitaka did the same to her. He put his nose to her hair and sniffed, sensing nothing but _San_ in it; she smelled lusty and distinct, keen and wild, carrying with her the aroma of cedars and soil and furs and dew. "Let's," she said, laughing.

San lifted her arms up and scooped Ashitaka nearer to her, put her maw to his mouth, smeared her scent over him and his scent over her. And then they continued to compress the space and the moonlight between them until the splashes of shadow and waves of radiance flickering in turns over their skins came upon them as if they were one unbroken scroll to be painted upon. The proximate press sparked warmth within their bellies, and brought an influx of light to their eyes. The shadows affixed to their bodies blended into a single shape that grew tall and shifting behind them.

Afterwards, when the ebb came and their silhouettes stilled, they kept close. It wasn't yet cold enough for being outdoors to be unbearable, or even uncomfortable, but the temperature had swooped low enough for Ashitaka to want to drape his limbs on San's limbs to kindle for them all the warmth he could.

"So where's Yakkul?" San said first, to break the silence, pawing the stone by her feet. "I thought you would have taken him here with you."

"Not for what I had in mind. Your brothers agreed to guard him." Ashitaka sighed. "I know I shouldn't have come so suddenly, and I'm sorry; I was cold, and—"

"So was I." San curled her body around his body and pressed her head into his lap. "I think it must be because I miss her."

"Moro?" Ashitaka put his hands on her again and stroked heartily.

"Yes," she said, "and whoever _she_ was."

"She?"

"The woman who bore me." The light drifting down from the skies was white in her black hair, shivery, like dust crumbled from the stars. "I must have made her miserable."

"Oh, San—" Now the moonshine wreathed around San's crown of locks shimmered in waves when he petted it through, planted his hands deep in it. "Why think of her?"

"I'm not sure, but," she said, furling her hands into fists, "I saw a woman bathing her baby by the river. She was singing and laughing, so I stayed to watch them, though I don't know why. I shouldn't have stayed so long. They saw me; they ran." She kept her eyes downcast. "And seeing them, there, I…"

"Is there a thing I might do to make it—"

San shook her head. "It's nothing important. It isn't supposed to be, not for a wolf," she said, and was silent awhile. "It must be awful to be blind and dumb and yet suffer in this way. Do you humans feel like this every day?

"Not every day." Ashitaka chuckled. "Only sometimes."

"And it always goes away?"  

"The pain? Always. But not the memory, not the want. Or the regret, if you have it."

"I see." San sighed into Ashitaka's lap. "No beast of my wood has ever truly understood what longing is. Or that—the regret. They mistake them for other things and don't recognise them for what they are."

"I guess you do, then?"

San offered no reply to the question, and said instead, "I pity your kind." Her hands were languorous tracing along his belly, his hipbone, and the bruise she'd thumbed in there, the imprint of teeth she bit above that. "Are your hairless mothers warm enough in the winter?" She took a harsh breath. "My mother chased me up trees to teach me to run and hunt, whispered to me the words of the wood, fed me her milk, dressed me in the skins of wolves and raised me as her own. Moro, oh, _my_ mother, her coat—it was warm and magnificent."

Ashitaka wondered if he was either of those things to her, if even just a little; he couldn't stop a tiny piece inside him from hoping he was. "I don't think she liked me very much."

"She liked you plenty, for a human." San propped a kabocha into her hands and rolled it between her palms. When she looked up to meet Ashitaka's quizzical expression, she explained, "She'd mentioned there was a life for me with you. Haven't I told you before?"

Joy bloomed in him then, warm and sweet and soft, for he remembered. Of course, he remembered. "You have," he said, but his voice was very soft, and San had already turned her attentions elsewhere. She was rummaging through her dress, now, and revealed she had hidden a handful roasted chestnuts in it. Those too, she had likely 'borrowed' from the harvest.

"Say," she said, absentminded. Ashitaka fiddled with his obi. "What was your mother like?"

"Ah, she's long been gone."

"Tell me about her, anyway." Easy and quick, San peeled back the hard casing of the chestnuts and lifted one into Ashitaka's mouth. Before San took her fingers back, Ashitaka took a generous nip of them. Much to her delight, for she laughed and squealed and only pulled away after he had licked them clean.

"Well," he started, smacking, and then tonguing, his lips, "oh, where shall I begin? Her voice, perhaps—it's what I remember best, because of how lovely it was. And oh, she had such gentle strong hands. And long, long hair. Like mine used to be! But it was as black as the kanemizu the people here like to use, darker than what I have. "

"And was she strong?"                      

"Very. She taught me the art of archery. The girls in my village prefer to take up the sword, but she liked the bow best. I think it was because she hadn't quite the fastest of legs."

"You're unlike her in that way." San squeezed Ashitaka's thighs in either one of her hands. An agreeable jolt plunged down his spine. "You've got good legs, haven't you?"

"It's the only way I try to be unlike her." Ashitaka chuckled. "I loved her well."                                             

"And she you?"

"Dearly. She sang me songs, spun me yarns, braided my hair, sparred with me, and weaved tapestries when she had little else to do. I remember when I was not long grown from a babe she had used to make for us—then three: a big brother, a little sister, and me—these honeyed sweets, and serve them early in the evening, when we could watch the pretty pinks and golds set from the doorway, and laugh together, and speak of what a good or ill time we had had that day. It mattered little if any of us had argued; you would smell the food from the top of the hill coming home, and once you stepped back inside the hut, you would forget everything but the sweets and each other. It was—I remember it to have been wonderful, those years, that time."

Ashitaka's heart had swelled to throbbing. He put his hand over his chest, stroking it over to try and lessen the hurt. He swallowed something hollow and tight. Still he did not summon any memory of his mother abed and coughing and dying but the last, did not conjure any thought beyond that of the moment she was truly fading, when she had held his hand and commanded him to live as well as he could, for it had always comforted him. Yet the pain did not ease until San spoke.

"Rare." San was furrowing her brow, confused perhaps with how dissimilar her childhood must have been. "So she was a kind human."

"She was." His voice broke a little. But he had to regain his composure. Ashitaka peered out the den to see the stars glittering, thousands and thousands of them brightening with the deepening of the night. The clearest few of them all were those that made the constellation of subaru, studded high and resplendent upon the sky. "And how she could ride! Faster than any man. Far faster than my father, which is why I think he married her."

"I've never had a father." San yawned; she always liked to fall asleep listening to a story, sometimes so she could dream the end of them. "Tell me of yours."

"He loved us all very much. He came home every day with sweat on his brow and a smile on his face and a kiss for my mother. He had the brightest laugh of anybody I ever knew. And he was tall and strong-shouldered and broad-backed, and had strength enough to scoop my brother and sister and me up all at once. It was a useful skill to have around when we fought."

"I didn't think you'd be one to fight your siblings."

"Oh, I would. Silence is a sound weapon, don't you think?" Oh, Ashitaka wished he had never grown mad at them, for each of them were now bygone. His father, too, he missed sorely, and regretted having not been at his side when he had died. He quietened the same way he would have had he quarrelled with his siblings and waited for San to speak, to take the ache away.

"Then that's hardly fighting!" San perked up. "My brothers and I fight all the time. Truly, I mean. Biting, clawing, growling. But we forget it the next day, and forgive each other faster. Much quicker than humans do. That's the wolf's way, our tribe's way."

"And me?" Ashitaka laughed. "You always forgive me when I'm bad. And I'm ever grateful for it, but it makes me curious as to what I might be to you."

"My mate." San grinned. "A stupid, human one, but befitting of my form, and worthy of fathering my cubs someday, when we might want them."

"And gladly yours," he added, nodding, "I still would have been had you never wanted me back."

"That there, that's why you'll never be clever. I tried very hard to hate you for it, hate you for being what you are. But it was a waste of my time, because I couldn't do it." She yawned again and pawed at her eyes, whimpering before she flexed her shoulders and arched her back. Sleepyheaded, she then lay back down in Ashitaka's lap with a pant and a nuzzle. Some time passed before she asked, "Hey, do you think—do you think it's strange for us to live, together, as we do?"

"It's not strange at all." Ashitaka curled his finger around a lock of her hair, then took a handful so he could try and braid it. "I don't think so."

There was then another comfortable stretch of silence. It lengthened until San was again the one to lift it.

"Ashitaka," she whispered this time, too sadly and suddenly to have been quite asleep yet. She pressed her nose fast to Ashitaka's thigh, as if he had just grown the coat of a wolf and she was trying to bury herself in it. "I can't hear the trees as well as I used to." She looked up at him with glazed eyes. "For a moment, by the river, it was silent. There were no kodama to be seen, none to be heard, and the wind had stopped, and I was—I was so afraid. Ashitaka, I'm not used to the quiet. I—"

"But the sounds came back after a small while, didn't they?"

"I can't remember. But I do remember the woman, the child, the eyes of the both of them on me," she said, taking a long breath, "and when they looked, the trees would not speak to me, though I called out for them."

"Hush now, it's only because the trees are still little." Ashitaka squeezed her shoulders. "They'll grow back in time, and they'll learn you again."

"Will they?" Her brows tensed. "I thought I had forgotten the forest; I thought it had forgotten me." San gnawed at the back of her wrist, snarling, looking away. "I thought I had turned."

"You did no such thing." Ashitaka took her hands from her, then curled his fingers under her ears. "Do you hear that? The littlest kodama, snoring in their sleep?" And then San laughed, laughed loudly. Ashitaka kissed the side of her mouth, her temples, put her head to his shoulder. "See? _I'm_ the one who's turning."

"Warm," San murmured as she pressed her cheek to his heart. "Oh. It's pounding."

Hotly, Ashitaka thought, for you. And he had her to thank for it still to be beating.

For some time they remained that way, as if in contest as to who would fall into dream first. Before that happened, though, San spoke up.

"You remember, don't you?" she asked. "You remember the first time we saw a kodama come back to us, the way it laughed?"

"I do." He nodded. "We had kodama in Emishi, as well. Cute little things. They'd call for us when the peaches yielded, and scattered about screaming when the paulownia leaves fell. That's how we'd know summer was over."

Ashitaka's thoughts drifted. In San's forest there were different signs to look for the coming of the red season, for it was without falling leaves, without that bold dying colour. Here the fronds lingered green, and one would have to strain one's ears for the wingbeats of sparrows flocking to the fields for spare rice, then away into the comfort of a summer elsewhere. And the birdsong of wagtails, and the wind in the dry reeds, and the burble of sweetfish crashing downstream. Moles would burrow madly underground, and deer would leap about in yearning for mates, calling their plaintive calls for what seemed like every hour of the day. And at dawn, clouds—shaped like desultory mackerels, like little pilchards swimming upstream—would scud, scalelike, across pale blue skies still moist with morning.

"It's a lovely night, isn't it?" Ashitaka thought of dew caught on moss, and rain on San's eyelashes, and said, "I like the autumn very much," but he forgot to add it was thanks in part to his having an excuse to keep warm and be near her.

"Ashitakaaa," San said. She shut her eyes. Her speech was slowing with sleep. "That means sweetfish, doesn't it? How about—hmmm—how about we go for some tomorrow?"

"Of course! We'll go catch a bunch, and I'll even grill and salt them for you." Ashitaka's stomach grumbled a little at the thought of that.

"And we can say hello to the dragonflies, the rainbow ones you said were very pretty." San yawned. "Mnnn, you should also fry the kabocha. What did you call it? 'Tempura'?"

"Sure." Ashitaka nodded. "And if you'll allow it, I'd like to go out into the fields to pick some chrysanthemums for tea. We might water the flower garden, as well; it'll be nice and cool out in the woods. Maybe it'll storm! But we should make sure to be back in the den by then. And then I'll spend the night and you can do with me what you please. I'm sure I'll like whatever you'll want, because—because you're very good with your mouth. And your hands," he said, softly. His cheeks went a little hot. "How does that sound?"

San exhaled. The noise was soft. Ashitaka glanced over at her, and saw she had already fallen asleep, with her hands folded atop his legs and her face inclined moonward. Ashitaka smiled, sighed, and gently—gently!—wrapped her in his coat and her furs. Then he lay back beside her, and hoped she dreamt of wolves by waterfalls, and sylvan landscapes, and moondancing, and the innumerable splendours of sounds, as he would dream of her—fierce of heart, unplumbed of breath—and the tinkling and twinkling of the silver river she had shining over her skin.

**Author's Note:**

> Truly inadvertent Yin/Yang imagery, it's ridiculous. Another attempt at kigo within the context of moar OTP fic! There's still more to come, methinks. Watch out, I cannae be stopped.


End file.
